How-To Geek

Apps

Manage your apps, force them to stop running, clear out cache data, and more with the “Apps” settings. On the Samsung, you can reach this from the “More” tab.

We’ll teach you how to make the most of them in Lesson 2.

Battery

Battery life, or lack thereof, is a huge impasse to our cord-cutting desires. After all, what fun is a mobile device if you have to be near an outlet “just in case”? What’s the point of thinness and ultra-portability if you have to cart around a clunky charger and cable with you everywhere?

Nailing down the battery settings can help you diagnose and fix a great many battery woes. Note, on the Samsung, you can reach this from the “More” tab.

We will talk a great deal about this in Lesson 3.

Display

Using the display accounts for the majority of battery use. Simply put, if you never used your phone except when necessary, your battery would probably last for days (plural). But you don’t use your phone that way so you can dial down the brightness and decrease the timeout period to eke a bit more time out of your battery.

On the Samsung skin, these settings are quite different but most should have the same effect.

We go into display settings more in Lesson 3.

Wi-Fi

If you spend a great deal of time at home, or you have a device that doesn’t have mobile data capabilities, then you can turn your Wi-Fi on or off to save battery. The Samsung “Wi-Fi” settings are more or less the same with a few added options at the top.

We’ll talk more about this in Lessons 3.

Data Usage/Mobile Data

If you’re on a tight data plan and want to know how much data you’re using, or if you want to see how much data certain apps use, then you’ll definitely want to learn this setting and use it. Similarly, you may not want to use your phone’s mobile data when you’ve got perfectly good Wi-Fi at home.

Note, you can turn off mobile data, which will help save your battery, but this may have undesirable side effects, such as the inability to send and receive MMS. As you can see the Samsung’s version of the “Data usage” settings is more or less the same.

More on this in Lesson 3.

Location

Many of your apps, such as “Camera” and “Facebook,” report your location and this can lead to high battery use. You can adjust your location settings so that they use less battery. You can also turn off location specific items in many apps.

You can access the Samsung “Location services” from the “More” settings. As you can see it has a bit more going on than with the plain Android “Location” settings.

We’ll explain more about this in Lesson 3.

Security

There’s a great many ways to protect your device and data on Android. On the Samsung device, the “Security” settings can be accessed from the “More” tab.

However, the “Lock screen” settings are accessible from the “My device” tab.

We’ll show you how it’s done in Lesson 4.

Storage

Similar to battery life, you can run out of storage space too. The storage settings are an excellent place to determine what is taking up space, and how much you can reclaim by removing applications and deleting stuff you don’t need. You’d be surprised how much space you get back this way. On the Samsung, this can be reached from the “More” tab.

We’ll talk a great deal more about this in Lesson 5.

Backup and Reset

Backing up your stuff is pretty important on any computer you use, but it’s even more important on your phone. Aside from the everyday disasters that can befall it, it’s also really easy to lose, in the back of taxicabs, to toilets, and common thieves. Using your device’s backup abilities effectively can save you a lot of awful heartache.

On the Samsung device, you can access this at the bottom of the “accounts” settings.

We’ll talk a great deal more on this in Lesson 5.

What this series offers

This series is comprised of four lessons that covers what we believe are keys areas to managing and mastering your Android devices.

Lesson 2 – Application Management

Trying out new stuff is fun and it’s all too easy to download apps until your phone is crammed with shortcuts and widgets. If you have a bunch of apps on your device you should understand all the ins and outs of shortcuts, Google Play, and the app settings.

Lesson 3 – Extending your Battery’s Life

You should definitely understand how mobile device batteries works, and the best conditions under which to operate them. Moreover, there’s a ton of stuff you can also do in the settings, which can help you get more use out of your battery during the course of a day. We cover all those things including managing your battery’s settings and the best ways to help it survive an average day’s use.

Lesson 4 – Performance and Security

Speed things up and lock things down! Truth told, there’s a bevy of devices on the market that perform very well even when burdened by whatever you can throw at it but there’s also a great many that don’t. So we’ll discuss possible ways you can improve that.

Also, you should definitely take device security seriously whether it’s a pattern lock, password, PIN, encryption, or any of the other ways you can protect your data and self from prying eyes. No worries, we’ll take you through all that in this lesson.

Lesson 5 – Data Management

Finally, we’ll talk about managing your data both in terms of how much space it occupies, and whether it is routinely backed up. After all, you spend a great deal of time on your phones and tablet, shouldn’t you understand what your devices are storing, and how much storage that data is taking?

Furthermore, if you’re going to keep your most important stuff on on a device the size of deck of cards, shouldn’t you at least make sure you can’t lose everything in one moment of forgetfulness? We think so and that’s why we cover a variety of methods you can always make sure that even if you drop your phone down a sewer grate, everything that’s on it can be saved.

Conclusion

That’s all for today. We’re going to stop for the time being and let all this sink in. We encourage you to familiarize yourself with your device’s settings before we get to good stuff tomorrow when we’ll talk all about managing your applications and getting to know the Google Play Store’s settings.

I would love to see an article on launchers. Personally, I've been using ADW for years now, and while I don't heavily customize it, I would never go back to the stock launcher on any device, just because of a couple of simple features - locking the desktop layout being at the top of the list.

Good one! Great timing for me, because I just recently bought my first android device... Though I'm hoping for extended discussions for android mods stuffs. Like about its terms, ROM's, kernels, cwm, flash, etc.

Nice article, I like how much content HTG has been writing recently, I'd just like to correct a minor error. About half way down you called the on screen buttons at the bottom of the phone the "action bar" this is incorrect. Per this link Google refers to that as the "Navigation Bar" the action bar refers to the bar located at the top of many apps, per this article.

Good one! Great timing for me, because I just recently bought my first android device... Though I'm hoping for extended discussions for android mods stuffs. Like about its terms, ROM's, kernels, cwm, flash, etc.

You really, really want to start reading the XDA site. It's all about Android, specifically about tweaking and hacking (in a good way) Android devices. http://www.xda-developers.com/

Born and brainwashed an Ohio State Buckeye, Matt now lives a warm, snow-free life just north of the Texas/Mexico border. He fancies himself a modern-day jack-of-all-trades; favorite conversation starters include operating systems, Android, BBQ, quantum physics, and roller skating.

Published 04/21/14

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